Hillary Clinton’s Latest Move Just Backfired In A Big Way

There is no aspect of life in which Americans can find refuge from the liberal desire to politicize everything.

The latest example is the coverage of Hurricane Matthew.

But it blew up in Hillary Clinton’s face.

In the run up to the deadly Hurricane Matthew – which killed nearly 300 people in Haiti – reaching the Florida coastline, the Clinton campaign made a decision to purchase TV ad time on The Weather Channel.

They believed they would have a captive audience in a key battleground state to spread their message via TV ads.

Politico reports:

“But the Clinton camp is refusing to be completely shut out of the conversation: Her team is buying airtime on The Weather Channel in a slew of major Florida media markets.

Clinton is seeking to appeal directly to swing-state voters potentially in the path of Hurricane Matthew and will spend $63,000 to reach Weather Channel viewers there for five days beginning on Thursday, according to a source monitoring TV ad buys. Hurricane Matthew is currently forecast to approach the Florida East Coast late Thursday or on Friday.

It’s a risky proposition. The potential human and economic toll of major storms makes for one of the trickiest decisions of all for presidential campaigns: how to derive political benefit from natural disaster — or simply respond at all — without seeming to exploit real suffering.

The Weather Channel, unsurprisingly, gets a spike in viewership during natural disasters — and not just in the affected areas. Viewers across the country tend to tune in to watch storm footage.”

Critics immediately blasted the idea of using the coverage of a deadly hurricane for political purposes.

[email protected] tone-deaf to plan flight of negative ads on @weatherchannel in Florida to coincide with Hurricane Matthew. #shameless https://t.co/HT8znJGLRu

— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) October 6, 2016

Fox News also reported that the Chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee ripped the decision:

“If they’re out being too political at a time when the country has its prayers with the people affected, I think it could backfire,” Rep. Greg Walden, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Fox News earlier Thursday, before the delay was announced.

“Earlier in the week, we made changes to our TV ad reservations across hundreds of stations in several battleground states including Florida,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton spokesman. “Less than 1% of those changes included The Weather Channel. We have requested that stations in Florida delay any of those ads on The Weather Channel until after the storm passes.”

Clinton’s decision to air ads on The Weather Channel as attention shifted from the 2016 campaign to the approaching hurricane sparked some criticism from Republicans, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.